1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a doughnut fryer guide and more particularly to a doughnut fryer guide that enables more than one size doughnut to be fried on a doughnut frying machine.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Those skilled in the art are familiar with machines that automatically fry doughnuts in hot oil. U.S. Pat. No. 3,329,081 to Ernest J. Roth exemplifies the type of doughnut frying machine that the present invention renders significantly more useful.
Doughnut frying machines with which the present invention is most useful comprise a frying kettle that contains a hot oil bath. A turning device separates the hot oil bath into two portions, each of which contains propelling means that advance the dough forms through the bath. Each propelling means typically comprises a plurality of spaced pusher bars that transversely span the bath and attach at their ends to chains. The chains pass over motor-driven sprockets. The pusher bars of the propelling means in the first portion of the bath advance the dough forms (deposited at the first end of the bath by a depositing device) toward the turner. The hot oil fries the dough forms on one side as they travel through the first portion of the hot oil bath. The turning device flips them over into the second portion of the bath, where the other propelling means advances them toward a discharge means as they fry on the other side.
Automatic frying machines like that just described enable large amounts of doughnuts to be fried in a relatively short period of time with little intervention by an operator. However, they do have a limitation: Dough forms too small relative to the spacing between the pusher bars drift transversely to their direction of movement through the hot oil bath because of the violent agitation during frying. Then, when the dough forms reach the turner, they are no longer in well defined rows, causing problems in the turning operation. For example, some of the dough forms might only partially travel onto the turner and thus be turned over back into the first portion of the oil bath. Another dough form, in the next row presented to the turner by the next pusher bar, may then push the first dough form onto the turner, which this time is turned over into the second portion of the oil bath. Thus, the first dough form is fried for the second time on the same side but not at all on the other side. Or, as another example, the first dough form might be turned over onto the top of a dough form in the next approaching row. Those two dough forms might then turn over together into the second portion of the oil bath, preventing proper frying of either dough form where they are in contact. In any event, misfeeds at the turner require that one or more inspectors work at the discharge end of the frying machine to remove improperly fried doughnuts.
One approach to eliminating the additional labor and increased waste when frying too-small doughnuts involves using air jets to direct the dough forms into the turning device. U.S. Pat. No. 3,061,072 to Edward Schwertl shows the use of air jets to align dough forms as they near the turning device in a doughnut frying machine. Another approach involves manually straightening the dough forms as they reach the turning device. Another approach uses guides that extend the length of the first portion of the bath to maintain the dough forms in well defined rows as they advance and thus prevent them from drifting transversely. The use of guides in continuous cooking machinery is shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,201,364 to Charles E. Carpenter and 3,391,634 to Robert W. Williams.
Of those solutions, the use of guides has been found to be the most effective. Air jets, for example, become easily clogged in the environment of boiling and splattering oil of a doughnut frying machine. Manually turning or placing the dough forms as they reach the turner involves additional labor and thus defeats the purpose of using automatic cooking machinery.
However, known guide bar apparatus suffers from a significant shortcoming: a machine equipped with guide bars can produce only one size doughnut. Therefore, that approach does not really represent a solution to the problem because it merely changes the machine so that it can only make smaller doughnuts. Another machine is still required to make larger doughnuts; in other words, the known prior art does not disclose a machine or means for making different sizes of doughnuts.